


darling, dearest, dead.

by asroarke



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, The 100 Mental Health Awareness Week, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 06:08:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18733165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asroarke/pseuds/asroarke
Summary: Jasper lives happily in this delusion episode after episode, seeing opportunity after opportunity for one of Alex’s friends to step in. But they never take it. It gets closer and closer to the episode everyone thinks Alex will die in, and Jasper clings harder to his conviction that it won’t happen.He throws every argument he can think of to his ten followers. It’s a network whose primary audience is teenagers, so why would they write something so triggering? Or that there are close friends of hers that haven’t even interacted with her all season, so they can’t kill her off just yet. Or that it’s too obvious and their showrunner is the kind of guy who likes to turn the story on its head even if it doesn’t make narrative sense, so why would he give them an obvious death? It got to the point that Jasper had a list of other characters that could die off that episode instead, pleading for there to be a plot twist.But there isn’t a plot twist. No one saves Alex. And Alex doesn’t know how to save herself.Written for The 100 Mental Health Awareness week.





	darling, dearest, dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 (Monday May 6) - End Stigma: What brings you here this week? Has The 100 influenced your own mental health journey? Have you been affected by the way they portray different themes in the show? Etc.
> 
> I don't know how to talk about what happened to me when I watched the episode where Jasper killed himself. I wish I could be more eloquent and write a long essay about why and how it changed me and how I cope with my mental health, but that kind of thing is hard for me. But I do know how to project myself onto characters in fanfiction, so that's how I decided to tackle this. 
> 
> In this fic, I'm switching places with Jasper, letting his character experience what I experienced. And since it's a story about my relationship to Jasper Jordan, I wrote myself into it as the character on his favorite TV show that kills herself and triggers him.

It’s bad writing. Well, not even bad. Just careless. Like some showrunner put in a suicidal character because it’d be edgy and stir an emotional reaction in his audience yet didn’t bother to hire someone who is well researched on mental illness to make sure he handled it right.

Jasper doesn’t even like this show most episodes. He used to, that’s part of why he came back to it. It’s this thing his therapist has been working with him on, getting back to the things he used to love before he tried to kill himself. Nothing else really seemed to stick. Hanging out with his old friends just makes him feel worse. And picking up video gaming again doesn’t exactly make Jasper happy, more like it numbs him to the point that he forgets to hate himself for a few hours and then picks it back up as soon as he gets off the Xbox.

It was just by chance that he came back to The Delinquents. He was scrolling through Netflix at three in the morning, because he doesn’t sleep at night anymore, and it was trending. He had forgotten all about it during season three. But it’s hard to keep up with your television shows when you’re fighting tooth and nail not to be forced into a medical leave of absence from your university.

So, he caught up in time to watch the fourth season live. Jasper isn’t sure he really likes the show anymore, but he likes the people who like it. He finds himself scouring Tumblr to read all the meta and spec, occasionally posting a thought or two himself, though he only has ten followers. They never talk to him.

The one thing he does like about the show are the two main characters. It’s what made him keep watching past the pilot when the show first came out, and it’s why he keeps watching even though there is one character that makes him feel sick to his stomach whenever she comes onto the screen.

Alex. The depressed, suicidal mess that is like staring into a mirror. The girl who started off on the show with the brightest smile and the funniest lines. Whose friends fought to save her in the first season. But now, no one is fighting for her. Not even her friends. Who has the time for that when the world is ending?

Jasper feels guilty for fast forwarding through her scenes, but he can’t stomach each cry for help going unnoticed or ignored. And then, he’ll come online and everyone will be bashing Alex for being so annoying. Part of him wonders if his friends talk about him that way too, though they’d never admit it. Those are the days Jasper flees to fanfiction, usually modern AU so there isn’t a risk of finding a fic where Alex is suicidal like she is in canon. Though every now and then, he stumbles onto a modern fic where Alex tries to kill herself, and Jasper finds himself frantically trying to find something happier to read so he can sleep that night.

He’s embarrassed to talk about this with his therapist. It’s just… he’s a twenty-two-year-old man. He should have other things to be focused on. It isn’t normal for someone to have nothing to do except think about a show that most days he doesn’t even like. But there is literally nothing else in his life.

No college. Not until he gets cleared by a doctor that he’s stable enough to go back.

No job. Jasper has no marketable skills. He spent three years on a degree he hates, and it wasn’t even a degree that could get him a job outside of academia. He’s a walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge with no practical use.

No friends. It’s hard to speak to any of them when all of them were witnesses to his slow spiral and did nothing. He tried to talk to Murphy about it, but he just kept cracking jokes. Clarke was too busy to notice anything out of the ordinary. Harper was going through her own shit. And Monty… well, Monty was who Jasper called the night he tried to kill himself, but Monty didn’t pick up. He didn’t follow up later, either. Though it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. Jasper took the pills as soon as Monty sent him to voicemail. His last resort wasn’t there to pull him back, so he took it as a sign.

All he has are The Delinquents and his OTP that might not ever get together. And all the fanfictions that he secretly wants to write but he isn’t good at anything else, so why would he be good at that? And he has Alex, maybe the only person in his life that understands what it is like to be surrounded by loved ones yet be all alone.

Everyone thinks Alex is going to kill herself before the finale. But Jasper isn’t convinced. It’s too obvious. And honestly, it’d be a much better story if they wrote Alex’s recovery. It could be a really cool arc in season five. And there are dozens of other characters who have been dealing with mental health problems that the show hasn’t taken the time to explore yet, so it could be a theme for the season.

Jasper lives happily in this delusion episode after episode, seeing opportunity after opportunity for one of Alex’s friends to step in. But they never take it. It gets closer and closer to the episode everyone thinks Alex will die in, and Jasper clings harder to his conviction that it won’t happen.

He throws every argument he can think of to his ten followers. It’s a network whose primary audience is teenagers, so why would they write something so triggering? Or that there are close friends of hers that haven’t even interacted with her all season, so they can’t kill her off just yet. Or that it’s too obvious and their showrunner is the kind of guy who likes to turn the story on its head even if it doesn’t make narrative sense, so why would he give them an obvious death? It got to the point that Jasper had a list of other characters that could die off that episode instead, pleading for there to be a plot twist.

But there isn’t a plot twist. No one saves Alex. And Alex doesn’t know how to save herself.

And so, the one person, albeit fictional, that would understand Jasper, his struggle, the fact that he hasn’t gotten out of bed all week… that person goes out. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. A slow, agonizing suicide that dragged on the same way Jasper’s attempted suicide did.

He sits completely still in his bed for an hour after the episode ended, just staring at the black screen of his laptop. Deep down, he had always known there would be no plot twist.

It doesn’t seem fair. Jasper got a plot twist when he tried to kill himself. He forgot to pay rent that month, like he almost always does. The apartment complex had put three different notices on his door, which he would have seen if he had left his apartment in those two weeks. But he didn’t see them, didn’t respond to their emails, didn’t answer the front door when the manager knocked… so, the manager let himself in and found Jasper on the floor, barely conscious. All it took was two fingers down Jasper’s throat and a frantic scream for the guys across the hall to call 911, and Jasper got his plot twist.

So, why couldn’t Alex? Alex has writers who could have saved her, who could have written her a good story, who could have slowed the end of the world down enough for her friends to help her through it. But they chose this path for her and didn’t give her another way out. They gave Jasper a perfect mirror of his own life and then ripped her away, telling Jasper that her suicide was inevitable. There was nothing anyone could do. Alex was gone, leaving Jasper all alone with the reflection of what his life could have been… and might still be, one day.

That day in his old apartment wasn’t the only time Jasper has tried to kill himself. It was the fourth. He keeps trying to change the subject in therapy when it gets brought up, but even he has to admit it’s a pattern. He’s been home for months now since his last attempt, and he has no way of knowing if the pattern is broken or not. History says no. The narrative says no. If Jasper was a character on TV, all the fandom blogs would predict his suicide. It just makes sense in the story.

He needs a distraction from his suicidal thoughts. Except The Delinquents is his usual distraction. But he can’t go online and see gifset after gifset of that suicide. He tries reading some fanfiction, but it’s not enough to consume his thoughts. His mind keeps going back to Alex. To the lost potential. To the inevitability of her death. To how helpless Jasper felt watching it unfold on screen.

 _At least she lives on in fanfiction,_ Jasper thinks as he looks for another fic to keep his interest. All he needs is something to keep him distracted enough so that he makes it through the night. In the morning, he could call someone or check himself back into the hospital if need be. Jasper just has to make it through the next few hours.

But nothing feels right. All the newest fics are canonverse and either focus too much on Alex’s mental health or push it to the side like the writers did. One he clicked on even said they’re pretending Alex never existed in this AU because she’s so fucking annoying.

All Jasper wants is to live in a world where Alex is still here and happy… just for a few hours. But he just can’t find it. The fics exist somewhere but his brain is too muddled with memories of his own suicide and the visceral image of Alex’s for him to figure out how to search for it.

Jasper is heaving into his pillow when he starts thinking of the fanfiction idea he had a few weeks ago. It’s a silly modern AU that doesn’t really focus on Alex, but he knows that if he ever gets around to writing it, Alex would be happy. Surrounded by all her friends and falling in love. Being a normal person with normal problems, not fighting every second for the will to live.

It’s that alternate universe that he clings to. He pulls out a notebook and starts planning it out. Jasper has no idea what he’s doing. The last time he wrote anything he was twelve and it was for a poetry contest he later won… before giving up writing altogether because his dad said he wouldn’t make it as a writer. But Jasper takes a few stabs at a plot, and before he could rip the whole idea apart, he pulls out his laptop and starts typing.

He doesn’t stop typing until all 3,625 words are written. Jasper just stares at the page, not sure what to do with it. The idea of sharing it with a bunch of people on the internet he’s never talked to is terrifying, but it’s what he ultimately does. And then, he stares at his first ever fanfiction, his eyes lingering on Alex’s name in the tags. She’s still alive in this world. Jasper wrote her in a different story. A gentler one. No plot twists needed.

78,309 words and four therapy sessions later, Jasper is back on track. He’s talked extensively about why the suicide triggered him. He’s made friends with some of the people who commented on his fic. And he sees possible new stories everywhere.

His family dragged him to a Renaissance Fair. There was this comedian doing old timey jokes, and all Jasper could think was if Alex worked here, this is the job she’d have.

He started a new show, and there was this funny but nosy roommate, and Jasper thought that was so Alex.

Every new story turns into visiting an old friend. Just a small check in to see Alex smile and to thank her in Jasper’s own way for not letting him feel all alone. It still hurts to remember she’s gone. He hasn’t watched that season or episode since. Watching it seems like an admission that it was inevitable. And Jasper won’t let himself believe that… not for Alex and not for him.


End file.
